Ecommerce
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October 21, 2024
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7 min read
The 2024 holiday shopping season is fast approaching, with retailers starting preparations as early as September to gear up for the busy months ahead.
A key trend for 2024, highlighted by Salesforce, is the growing focus on re-engaging existing customers. With rising customer acquisition costs and high digital marketing expenses, merchants increasingly invest in strategies to deepen relationships with their current customer base. Re-engaging customers during this critical season not only boosts sales and profit margins but also creates lasting value for your business. After all, acquiring a new customer can cost from 5 to 25 times more than retaining an existing one, and repeat customers tend to spend 33% more than first-time buyers.
However, many companies struggle to re-engage customers during peak seasons effectively. Success requires the right combination of tools and strategies to build strong customer relationships that drive meaningful results. This guide will help you identify opportunities to maximize your existing customer base, allowing you to spend less while achieving more.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a critical metric describing the total worth of a customer to your business over the entire duration of your relationship. CLV factors in individual transactions, potential future purchases, and revenue generated from the customer over time.
The basic formula for calculating CLV is:
CLV = Average Purchase Value × Purchase Frequency × Average Customer Lifespan
A higher CLV means your business can spend less on customer acquisition while maintaining profitability. CLV also serves as a measurable indicator of customer loyalty, which has significant implications for profitability, sustainable growth, and brand value. Understanding and tracking CLV is fundamental, especially during the holidays, as it shifts the focus from short-term gains to building long-term customer relationships. By keeping an eye on CLV, business owners can make strategic decisions around budgeting, marketing, customer retention, and long-term growth.
With the 2024 holiday shopping season spanning just under four weeks, it’s crucial to make the most of the other 48 weeks of the year. Implement tools, strategies, and campaigns that foster long-lasting and meaningful customer experiences to drive sustained success.
Deals and discounts often define the holiday season, but building customer loyalty requires more than just one-time offers. Consider these re-engagement strategies to encourage first-time holiday shoppers to return:
Personalization can significantly enhance the impact of your marketing efforts. According to McKinsey, companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue from these activities than those that don’t. Dive into your customer data to extract meaningful insights and tailor your marketing messages accordingly.
For inspiration, look to Amazon, which uses its vast customer data to create highly personalized holiday gift guides. Shoppers can create wish lists, receive curated product recommendations, and explore tailored gift ideas like “Gifts for Dad.” This level of personalization simplifies holiday shopping for customers while boosting sales.
Another good example is Spotify’s Wrapped campaign. While not strictly related to the holidays, Spotify's year-end feature has become a holiday tradition. The music streamer delivers playlists and social media graphics to users based on their personal listening habits. Each user gets shareable infographics of top artists, songs, and genres, as well as custom playlists based on their top tracks from the year.
Reward existing customers and incentivize even longer CLV by offering special, exclusive holiday deals or discounts. You can retain high-spending customers by enrolling them in a rewards program and sending small discounts or rewards via email or text after their initial visit.
Brands like Alo, and Parade, have successfully used loyalty programs to offer exclusive holiday deals. Alo launched an early access sale with a 30% discount exclusively for rewards members, while Parade offered an early VIP sale before its public event.
Limited-time deals like these are also a great way to spark repeat purchases. Create urgency by sharing flash deals, such as percent-off discounts or free shipping offers. Testing shows that urgency is best communicated within three days of the cutoff, so plan your messaging 72 hours in advance of the deal deadline.
Loyalty programs are one of the most effective ways to boost customer retention. Forrester’s research found that more than 20% of US online adults say their membership in a loyalty program motivates them to use a retailer they have purchased from previously. That 20% retention rate has big implications for your business. Simply increasing customer retention rates by 5% can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in profit.
Tools like Influence.io can make it easy to encourage customers to join or actively participate in your existing loyalty program. Influence.io is a simple tool retailers can use to set up points for customer actions like placing an order. Points can be converted to perks that keep customers engaged and coming back for more. With features like loyalty tiers, referral rewards, and integrations, Influence.io is designed to make your rewards program deliver benefits to customers and your business alike.
Social media can help you stay top-of-mind with a customer in the days and weeks following their first purchase. Utilize your Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, X, and Facebook pages to create entertaining and educational content. Aim to enrich your customer experience by hosting interactive quizzes, polls, and contests. ViralSweep, for example, is an all-in-one suite of tools for hosting sweepstakes, giveaways, and other high-engagement content.
User-generated content is particularly valuable during this time. Customers trust the recommendations of others, and UGC costs your business virtually nothing to create and share. REVIEWS.io can help you solicit and share this type of content easily during the holidays and beyond.
Remember, social media is a two-way conversation. Respond promptly to customer questions and feedback to foster a sense of community and connection.
Don’t be afraid to get technical when it comes to re-engaging potential customers. Retargeting campaigns are a powerful tool for reconnecting with users who have previously interacted with your brand but haven’t yet made a purchase. While these campaigns require some technical expertise and investment, they can be highly effective in reminding past visitors to take advantage of your holiday promotions.
Retargeting is all about focusing on warm leads—those who have already expressed interest in your brand or products. This targeted approach typically results in higher engagement rates and a better ROI compared to broader advertising strategies. Dynamic retargeting, for example, displays ads featuring products that a customer has previously viewed or added to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase.
To maximize the effectiveness of your retargeting efforts, you’ll need specific software and technology to leverage your customer data effectively. However, retargeting is just one of many tools available to help you re-engage your audience and drive conversions.
Business owners prepping for the holiday shopping season should consider what tools they have to enable fast, frictionless sales. Here are a few key areas to focus on as you design your holiday promotions.
Data analytics provides deep insights into your customers’ buying behavior and preferences, enabling you to identify trends that can enhance your marketing efforts. For instance, REVIEWS offers a feature called Session Replays, which gives you real-time visibility into how customers interact with your eCommerce site.
Session Replays allows you to see exactly how a customer navigates your site, capturing their actions in real-time. You can pinpoint key moments in the customer journey, such as when a customer adds an item to their cart after reading a review or when a product suggestion leads to an upsell. Leveraging these insights helps you bundle products more effectively, refine customer targeting and segmentation, and continuously optimize your website experience.
Data analytics can also be applied to customer reviews, which can be time-consuming to analyze manually. Tools like REVIEWS’ AI Review Assistant streamline this process by mining your reviews for key insights, bringing attention to areas that may need improvement, or highlighting competitive advantages.
By harnessing AI, you can easily extract valuable information from your review data. Simply ask a question, and the AI will process the data to reveal your company’s strengths, weaknesses, popular products, and more. Utilize this insight before the holiday season to ensure you’re capitalizing on every sales opportunity.
Customers appreciate businesses that go the extra mile to create a personalized experience. As Clover, a small business point-of-sale platform, notes, “The simple act of sending a personalized email thanking new customers for their business is a small gesture that can have a big impact on wooing them back.”
While sending individual, personalized thank-you emails may not be feasible during the busy holiday season, automation can make it effortless. This is especially useful when onboarding new members to your loyalty program.
Implementing an automated email drip series allows you to send timely, personalized messages to new loyalty members. These emails can thank customers for their purchase, welcome them to the program, and explain how your rewards system works. Tools like REVIEWS seamlessly integrate with platforms like Klaviyo, enabling these automated emails to be sent without adding to your workload during the holiday rush.
A robust digital strategy is essential for a successful holiday season. Consider working with experts like adQuadrant to design and implement a strategy that maximizes customer retention and drives growth.
To make the most of the holiday eCommerce season, focus on crafting a digital strategy that draws in customers and delivers a smooth shopping experience. Start by developing holiday-specific promotions, like discounts and special offers for key dates such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. Use dynamic countdown timers and striking banners to create a sense of urgency and drive quick purchasing decisions.
Maximize the potential of these peak shopping days by refining your landing pages to feature best-selling bundles and holiday collections. Ensure these pages are optimized for speed and are mobile-friendly, offering a seamless experience for all users, regardless of their device.
Beyond front-end optimization, it's equally important to maintain the stability of your website's backend during high-traffic periods. Avoiding site crashes is crucial; using a reliable platform like on approaches can prevent disruptions caused by last-minute changes.
Gift cards are another powerful tool Shopify can use to help manage the increased visitor load. Implementing a code freeze as the holiday season captures last-minute or undecided shoppers, offering a flexible gifting option that keeps your brand in the forefront of their minds.
To elevate your holiday strategy, consider adding personalized elements. Use customer data to tailor shopping experiences with individualized product recommendations and targeted email campaigns. Strengthen customer support with multiple channels to assist during the holiday rush, building trust and boosting conversions. These enhancements can significantly contribute to a more engaging and enjoyable shopping experience.
Re-engaging customers during the holiday season is essential for driving revenue growth and creating long-term value for your business. Leveraging tools like Influence.io and collaborating with partners like Adquadrant can help you develop a winning strategy that ensures customers return well beyond the holiday period.
Take the first step towards enhancing your customer engagement strategy today and secure lasting success for your business.
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